Blinding Loyalty

By | 1 February 2015
The Yamaji didn’t see it coming

Having taken over from their fathers

Working as farm hands Mullewa side

The seasonal work welcomed

Getting to drive the equipment

Preparing the land for wheat

Driving in circles and squares

Late at night and into early mornings

The extra dollars needed

These Yamaji didn’t see it coming

Over the years the equipment

Became flasher – more buttons

Control panels computerised

Farmers wanting more from the land

This was their priority – more, more, more

Local seasonal farm hands could be replaced

In fact they would be replaced – no loyalty there

Not even a thought to train them

Just bring in outsiders to operate

Expensive equipment now

The Yamaji couldn’t see it coming

His need for work made him blind

The opportunities not great inland

His loyalty to his father’s loyalty to the farmer

Made him blind to the fact

That he was no longer needed
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Charmaine Papertalk Green is from the Wajarri, Badimaya and Southern Yamaji peoples of Mid West Western Australia. She has lived and worked in rural Western Australia (Mid West and Pilbara) most of her life, and within the Aboriginal sector industry as a community agitator, artist/poet, community development practitioner and social sciences researcher. Her poetry has appeared in Antipodes, Artlink Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and The Lifted Brow, as well as in the anthologies The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry, Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry, Ora Nui: A Collection of Maori and Aboriginal Literature, The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets and Those Who Remain Will Always Remember: An Anthology of Aboriginal Writing. She lives in Geraldton, Western Australia.

More by Charmaine Papertalk Green on Cordite Poetry Review →

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